


Lucky Lad

by After_Baker_Street



Series: Back Together Again [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Coming Out, Confused John, Cuddling & Snuggling, Declarations Of Love, Depression, Homosexuality, John Watson's history, Kissing, Love, M/M, Making Out, POV John Watson, PTSD, Post Reichenbach, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 17:58:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/726181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/After_Baker_Street/pseuds/After_Baker_Street
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After John finally gathers the courage to tell Sherlock how he feels, Sherlock's response is unexpected, and unexpectedly painful. As John says -</p><p>"This is the story of how I broke Sherlock Holmes, and how he put himself back together again."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lucky Lad

**Author's Note:**

> This is chapter two of a work in progress, and it will be continued. Future posts to include: more Johnlock, sex, romance, visiting Mummy Holmes, Sherlock's history, John's history, etc. 
> 
> Your comments and questions are welcome and may direct the story!

> And all of the ghouls come out to play  
>  And every demon wants his pound of flesh...  
>  And I've been a fool and I've been blind  
>  I can never leave the past behind  
>  I can see no way  
>  \- Florence + the Machine "Shake it Off"  
> 

Strange, garbled words filtered down, into a dream so achingly dear I was breathless.

I woke on the sofa with a start. Sherlock was peering over me, icy blue eyes questioning and bright.

“Hours, John. You’ve been sleeping for _hours.”_ He leaned down, pressed his cheek against mine, quickly, then moved back to continue to stare down at me.

“Yeah, well, that’s what people normally do.” I groused. He tilted his head, and frankly, looked absurd at that angle. His severe, pale face was lit by early morning light.

“Oh, do you need. um. more. sleep?” He punctuated every word clearly with sarcasm, as though I’d made up the concept of sleep on the spot.

“Bit late for that, is it?” I said, sitting up and starting to work my shoulder, wincing. He sat next to me, directing me roughly with his hands. He turned me away from him and he started to massage my shoulder roughly. As his hands dug into the scarred skin I gave a sudden yelp of pain. He sighed, indignant, but immediately stopped.

He reached around me and started to unbutton my shirt from behind, pulling it only partway off, so that my shoulder was bare. His long fingers were warm and soft as he ran them over the exquisitely sensitive skin there. He was gentle, his touch responsive to my every move and breath.

“Sleeping on the sofa was foolish.” he intoned quietly.

“What a genius, world’s only consulting detective.” I laughed, and could hear him snort behind me. Then he was silent, his hands working more slowly, up my neck, down my arm. Having him touch me was still new enough that in a moment, I was breathless, washed in desire and pleasure.

Finally, he rested his mouth gently across the mass of scar on the back of my shoulder, like a kiss, but not quite. The truth was, I hadn’t wanted to leave him the night before. He was in that restive, manic state that overtook him during a case. But there was no case, the one we’d been working on had been settled when he identified the culprit correctly, impatiently, to Lestrade the night before, in a six word text message. Now Sherlock kept on to something I could not begin to understand, but it had been triggered two nights before, when I’d risked so much and told him how I felt. That I loved him.

He turned his face towards me, and I looked back over my shoulder at him.

“D’you ever wonder why I am the way I am?” He breathed, his eyes focused somewhere in the distance. I kissed the top of his head.

“All the time.” Sherlock was never one for linear conversation and instead of telling me more, just put his arms around my waist and held me, silent. I did wonder, and had long ago learned that I would have to be satisfied with the few hints Mycroft exposed. Whenever pressed for information about his past, Sherlock most often deftly deflected the inquiry, or sometimes outright refusing, saying the past was boring, or wasn’t relevant.

After a few moments, it was clear that was quite over, and I stood, and he stretched out languorously across the now-empty sofa. I absently stroked the stubble across my face.

“Alright then, I’m for a shower and a shave. Lunch later with the lads from St. Barts. Unless you...want me to stay?” Somehow my statement ended up wandering into a question.

“Don’t be absurd,” he said, waving me off, then as I started away he caught my eye. His eyebrow lifted wickedly he said “Skip the shave...it improves your face.”

I laughed and teased, “you like it!” His smile became a playful scowl. I leapt away but kept the stubble, just to indulge him.

I left early, to return some “borrowed” files to Greg Lestrade, knowing he’d be in his office, at least for a few hours, even on a Saturday. When I saw him, it was clear he was as overworked as usual and eager for Sherlock’s input on a case he’d been working for weeks. When I mentioned Sherlock was busy addressing a personal matter, he gave me the eye, studying me carefully over a cup of watery coffee. “Everyone here knows Sherlock doesn’t have a personal life.” When I tried to backtrack and say it was a family matter, he immediately went from suspicious to surprised. I tried to fob him off by adding that it was my family, but he stared at me as if I’d gone mad. He’d met Harry and knew my parents had been dead for ages.

I gave my excuses and hurried out.

Lunch was what it usually was; the blokes were full of nonsense. Teasing me about living and working with Sherlock was so overdone at that point they hardly took the time to take the mickey out of me. I wondered, idly, what they'd think if they knew what had changed. Not that they cared, Mark had been well out of the closet even back during our school days.

After a few lazy hours and far too many drinks, they had all gone, save my closest friend from those days, Will Holliday. He was the same as ever, more gray at the temples, maybe. We had another pint, sitting in the sun. He was going on and on, finally talking about me leaving for Afghanistan.

"We didn't think you'd come back, Watson. That's the truth."

He took a long drag from a cig his wife would kill him over, had she known.

"Too much dark in you. Seemed like you'd never...like it might end bad for you.”

“Is this your way of telling me you missed me?” I joked, but he gave me a stern look and continued.

“I mean it, mate. We all worried on it. You were always just...there. Waiting for something. We’d all go out, get pissed. And you’d be there, but you...weren’t there.”

“And to think, you’re getting sentimental in your old age, Holliday.” I quipped, realizing he was a bit more in his cups than I’d first judged. But I knew what he meant, and nodded.

“Oh, shut up, ya wee bastard,” he said fondly. “I’d see you sometimes, looking off into nothing when you thought you weren’t seen. I thought I knew some of it, with my Da dying...but I didn’t.”

He stood, holding out a hand to stop me before I interrupted. “But you came back, din’cha? Not dead, but still a fuckin’ ghost.” He sized me up, keenly, like the diagnostician he was. “It’s gone now, see? I don’t know how you did it, not through work, maybe through becoming a famous internet detective, but you, you’re alive now. You’re with us.” He said the word _us_ while gesturing widely, at the crowd, the sky, the blessed sun making a rare appearance.

I tried to laugh it off, and he continued on, pontificating on all manner of things - the NHS, the state of his practice, the conference he’d had with his daughter's teachers. As we went inside to pay, he was praising his lovely, long-suffering wife Angie.

“She’s a blessing, I tell you, my Angie. Wouldn’t give her up for the world. I tell you, you should meet someone, settle down. Have a sweet little something waiting by the door with a whiskey when you get home.”

Angie’d no more wait by the door than wait standing on her head, and I almost said it aloud. But instead I lifted my eyebrow and said “Maybe I have. Met someone, I mean. Though I’ve no idea where it’s going.” He looked shocked but laughed as he fumbled with his wallet. “Lucky lass!” he joked. I waited a beat until he glanced up at me in the doorway.

“Lad.” I corrected with a smile. And with that, stepped out into the street before he could respond.

The way back to Baker Street was long, and I took my time about it. Gave me a chance to clear my head, to think. Holliday had been right. I hadn’t fit in, not back in those days, and I hadn’t been alive, not really. Not ‘til Afghanistan. Not until my days had been crammed with life and death, not until nearly every moment was caught so heavily in the present that abstract thought was nearly impossible. I was capable in a world I could change.

When that was over, when I was invalided, all that trauma came roaring back. And that’s when the nightmares started. It was a dark, formless time, one without direction or meaning, facing the impossible obstacle of returning to “normal” life. I’d never had a normal life, so there was nothing to return to.

I was alone, and hopeless, in the way that only people who have experienced repeated traumatization are. Until I met Sherlock Holmes.

When I got back it was late afternoon, much later than I’d intended. I opened the door to see him framed by the bright window. He was playing the violin, the music stand before him. It was nothing I recognized, something fathomless and dark, edging on eerie. I stared at him and he slowly opened his eyes. They were like glacial pools, and they threatened to drown me. His face was intense with concentration, showing the same emotion pouring out of his violin. He was, without question, the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.

The piece went on and on, and I settled myself at my desk to address the blog I’d been ignoring for the past few days. I refused a few cases, ignored some rather pointed emails from Lestrade. I then turned to listen to the piece that felt like it was rapidly escaping Sherlock, first becoming frantic, then nearly unmanageable. His fingers were flying, and the music was somehow terrible and beautiful at the same time, nearly discordant. I really only knew the basics of music, so this was far beyond me.

Right as the music seemed to reach a peak, Sherlock stopped with a screech of the bow and nearly threw down the violin on the coffee table. He collapsed, or more properly, flopped, face-down on the sofa.

“Wow.” I said “What was that...that thing you were playing? You’ve never played that before.”

“Yes I have.” Came his muffled baritone. He didn’t move off the sofa. “I wrote it when I was seventeen.”

“And it ends like that?”

“No, John” he drawled, “it just goes on and...it doesn’t end. There’s nowhere for it to go. There’s just...all this tension. All this unfinished business. It unravels in the most beautiful way, but that’s it.”

I thought about that for a moment, in silence. Finally, he sat up and gave a sniff in my direction.

“Holliday smoking again? He’ll pay for it this evening.” Sherlock had never met Will Holliday, much less most of my old mates from school.

“Yeah...” I started but he raised a hand quickly stopping me.

“No, I’m thinking.” That normally meant I was being banished, or at least shushed until I faded into the background noise of the acrobatics of Sherlock's brain. But this time he gave me a sideways glance, strange and unknowable.

I went back to the computer.

The evening passed quietly, and night crept up. Sherlock mostly sat and thought, his fingers templed beneath his chin. When they were open, his eyes were blazing bright, moving quickly, tracking things - memories or ideas, I couldn’t tell which.

I eventually put aside the small dinner I’d made for myself when I realized the knot in my stomach really didn’t allow for eating much. My anxieties about Sherlock were mounting, so I tried harder to ignore them. Eventually I settled on watching Doctor Who reruns, but turned it way down. When I looked up, while Rose was banging on the wall, calling for the Doctor in another dimension, I realized Sherlock was gone.

It was late, so I went to check on him. I found him lying on the far side of his bed, facing away.

I hadn’t taken two steps when he said sharply “What are you doing here, John? You can’t be here.” It felt strangely like being stabbed.

I opened my mouth to respond, then realized there was nothing to say.

I slept in my own bed that night, and for many nights after. Sherlock vacillated between distant, cruel, and frantic. Over time, his face became drawn as he refused to eat. Dark shadows formed under his eyes. I started to worry he was truly ill. He met my attempts at conversation with silence, or flippant bitterness. He slept sometimes, during the day, a few hours here and there. Then he’d be up, typing away at something I couldn’t make out. Occasionally texting god-knows-who.

After a few days of that sort of behavior, I had tea with Mrs. Hudson and shared some of my worries. She was as puzzled as ever by his antics, but sent up cakes to try to tempt him to eat. She came to visit the next afternoon but he pointedly ignored her.

Eventually, I came to expect silence. He no longer talked to me. I would have leapt at the chance to throw him my phone or look up something online, as he usually ordered me about. After the first few days, when I tried to touch him and he reacted by standing as stiffly as a mannequin, I stopped trying to reach him, it only irritated him.

Worry got the better of me. I texted Mycroft. He’d been texting me asking for updates, emailing annoyingly frequently, until the last few days.

_Worried about your brother. Sherlock acting strangely. Advice? - JW_

_I’m aware of the situation. - MH_

Fat lot of help he was. I was surprised by my own creativity and inventiveness as I unleashed a silent stream of curses at Mycroft.

He had been “gone” for more than a week when I caught myself giving up. It was late evening, and I’d spent most of the day with a book, or tapping away at my computer. Sherlock was in his room - sleeping or building a bomb, I had no idea. I turned down all the lights in the flat, made my way to my own bed.

As I had most nights, I laid awake for hours, the ache in my chest only growing heavier. I felt the old injuries - my shoulder and my leg - begin to throb.

Eventually, I slept. It was either that, or cry out from the suffocating pressure of pain building at the back of my throat.

I came to awareness suddenly, heard myself take a great gulp of air. Something felt strange, the old anxieties threatened to grip me. As I peered into the darkness, I could barely make out Sherlock in the doorway, making his way towards me, tall and fair in only silk pajama bottoms. He was so pale he seemed to be made of a slip of reflected moonlight, and his dark curls faded into the shadow of the room. Grief pounded at my heart like a drum.

He did the most unexpected thing, went round the other side of the bed, slipped under the covers and huddled against me. He pressed his whole body to mine, pulling me tight to him. His hands were gentle but desperate, stroking me, caressing my back and chest and shoulders. He was murmuring all the while “John, God, John, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. Please, I’m so sorry.” His low, dark voice seemed somehow in tune with my heart.

He clung to me like a man drowning. “I’m unbearable,” he went on, “I don’t know how you stand it, I’ve treated you abominably, I’m so sorry.” He squeezed me to him, my back pressed against his heaving chest, his mouth against my neck, the back of my head. I reached back, and laid my hand on his hip behind me, whether to stop him or reassure him, I wasn’t sure.

“John,” he breathed, “that thing you said, the thing you said in the morning after the night we...”

But I would not allow him to talk around it, and I would not deny it or soften it, would not run from it any longer.

“That I love you?”

And it was true, loving Sherlock had become the fact underlying all other truths in my life. It had become a part of me, a part of reality so slowly and subtly I hardly felt the foundation of the world shift. It had become a part of me as surely as my name, and I had never said it aloud before that night.

He said nothing.

He had not kissed me since that first night. He had been affectionate, but strangely, for a day or two after, but he had not kissed me. When I went to kiss him, he tilted his chin away but would hug me close. For more than a week now, he had not done even that. I did not reach for him any longer; I had grown used to him stepping away. Now, he nuzzled me warmly, softly kissed the back of my neck. At first I was frozen with surprise, then he made his way up my neck, to the line of my jaw, to tease and nip at my earlobe. I dug my fingers into his hip and gave a shuddering moan. He met it with a deep growl as I turned to face him.

I was nearly embarrassed to be aroused so quickly, so visibly, but his eyes went wide with pleasure. The room fairly sparked with energy. Those pale eyes were dancing and wicked.

“I’ve never,” he started, his voice faltering. “I never...” he gave up and kissed me - sweet, sudden kisses.

It was almost painful to leave his generous lips, but I did. “I’ve never been with a man.” I volunteered, thinking he was headed somewhere similar. He smiled, a sudden quirk of the lips, and a raised eyebrow. His hand slid down my chest slowly, long fingers slipped beneath the waistband of my pants.

I’m not sure what I intended to say, but the guttural sound that forced its way up from my belly certainly wasn't in any language. I was flooded with emotion - pleasure warring with irritation, worry wrapped up in desire and longing. My senses were overwhelmed; the wild citrusy tang beneath his heady, heavier scent filled me with a tender ache I could not begin to ignore.

He took a deep breath and slowly took his hand away, teasing to the last. He gripped my hip and looked at me until I met his eyes.

“No, I mean, I never thought this would happen.”

“Neither did I.”

He was there with me, seeing only me. And when Sherlock saw something, he took it in, observed it, as he would say and then he knew it intimately. I held no secrets from him any longer. I realized that he had known I had loved him, that he had given me the gift of letting me keep it close, hidden even from myself. He used knowledge as a weapon, and he could have cut me to the core with it at any time.

I attacked him with my mouth, turning his slightly hesitant kisses into something deeper, wound tightly with lust. He was responsive, pliable beneath my hands and mouth. But he only mirrored me, he did not change or initiate anything, he simply let me. I was nearly swept away with desire and relief, but this felt strange, felt off somehow.

I pulled away as he bit his lip, hard. I had just rubbed the flat of my palm across the front of those silk pajamas. The slick silk was thin and his shaft was straining against that taut fabric.

His eyes blinked open. “Wha..?” he sighed when he saw me staring at him, I could feel my brow knitted with concern.

“Where were you, Sherlock? Where did you _go?”_ I rested my hand against his jaw, the tips of my fingers brushing his dark hair.

He made several starts before speaking, his mouth working silently for a moment. “After you said that...well...I was thinking. I don’t know, John, if someone can rebuild what’s in me.” He steadied himself, looking away, not meeting my eye.

“There are...things about me that aren’t like everyone else.” He continued, “It’s what makes me myself. What makes me able to do what I do. I need to sort out if there’s a way to keep the parts that work and...sort out if I can, I don’t know. Make it different. And so that I can still be myself.”

His voice trailed off, hesitant. I tilted my head so that he could not look away without closing his eyes. They were bright and liquid, shining in the shimmering light.

“You can, Sherlock. If anyone can, you can. I’ve always believed in you. Always.” I knew what I said would echo what was said so long ago, when the whole world disbelieved in him, when it had sometimes felt as though I was the only person in the world who knew Sherlock, believed him. Believed in him.

He gave a tiny, sad smile and hugged me close, leaning his head against my chest. But instead of encouraged, he seemed deflated.

“I want you to know. I want you to see why I am this way, John.” he said my name with such tenderness, with such love. I wondered how long he’d been doing that and I hadn’t noticed.

“Of course, tell me, tell me anything, everything.” I said into that dark halo of curls. He shook his head sharply.

“No, no it’s better if you see.” His voice was ice hardened, it was iron, “I think it’s time we pay Mummy a visit.”

His shoulders gave that strange jerk again, and I realized he was somehow trying to shake off something. Something that haunted him and held him down. He looked up at me and his eyes were blazing with dread.  


> And I am done with my graceless heart  
>  So tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart


End file.
